Rio Olympic Trailer

By RKCR/Y&R, London, UK

For BBC
Brand BBC Sport

Highly Commended in category Design & Branding

In subcategory Broadcast Design / Animation

Project Description

The BBC needed to promote their coverage of the Rio Olympics across all their platforms; multiple social media accounts, their online on-demand iPlayer, and their multiple TV channels. We decided to design a series of motion graphic characters and films that could span every touch point, from TV films to digital idents on BBC iPlayer online, as social media films counting down to the start of the Olympics, in digital billboards and as bespoke motion graphic title-sequences for BBC1 and BBC4.

Agency Solution

BBC Rio. Survival of the fittest. We dramatised the competitiveness of the games in a fun and surprising way. Instead of human athletes we created surprising animal athletes. A jaguar became a sprinter, caimans became synchronised divers, an anteater became a hammer thrower, a sloth became a gymnast. These characters were then used in a series of motion graphic films online and on TV – shown at the beginning of every BBC broadcast of the Olympics. The motion graphics title sequence that opened the BBC’s Olympic coverage was painstakingly animated. Their animated movements were crafted to become human; the armadillo claps its hands in chalk before attempting to weightlift, the jaguar cracks its neck before forming up on the starting blocks.Each animal’s behaviour was modelled on a real athlete’s. Weightlifter Hossein Rezazadeh from Iran became the inspiration for the Armadillo. From his shaking legs to the exact speed, breathing patterns and manoeuvre of his ‘Clean and Press’.